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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 141: Slade 296
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 305
A month had passed, and the duo were enjoying a giant game of Ragnarok checkers (board four times as large, and pieces could gain various powers) they had invented when red light washed over their board. Slade was running to protect Shella, and she had created a foxhole in the stone by the time he reached her. Together, they huddled, looking up as a ball of purple and red fire grew in the distance.
Was this the end of this world?
It grew such that it appeared to be larger than the moon, then fell, trailing flames, growing smaller until they could discern a man-like shape inside it. Many miles distant it thundered to the rock. A moment later they felt the earth shaking under them, but here there was little in the way of tall spires, and so when one snapped in half and fell it was two miles away, and no threat.
The two got out, dusted themselves off, and looked at each other.
“I think that requires investigation,” Slade said.
“Shella replied, “Let me get my mirror.” Before he could respond a golden light washed over them, and they looked up again.
Higher in the sky than the ball of red fire had formed was a figure surrounded by a golden glow. From the ground and out of sight came a great, roaring complaint.
“You dare imprison one of the Thirteen? We will have your head for that. I will drink your heart’s blood, and sup on your soul. Release me at once, and I may not hunt you and everyone of your wizardly disciples and their families down to slaughter them all.”
“No, I don’t think so.” The reply was calmer, but just as loud.
“Listen you fool, I ate the Town of Manta’s Bay. Every last one of them. You think I won’t do my vow?”
“No, Dreadlord, I believe you. You are exactly as horrible as you say you are. Which is why I refuse to bend my decision.”
“You cannot imprison me here for long, wizard. My powers of will will gain me freedom. I am a Psi-Clone Cyclonic Entity, mind transferred to new body to new mind and on and on until I was able to break free of the limits of the human body. In fact, even now, I will drain your intelligence.”
“This world has little in the way of psionic power. This world is high in magic, and has none living that you could bend to raise the mentality. Your greater powers of mind will avail you none, and I cast my Prison from the shadow reality next to this one where I can use all of my powers with greater effect as it is a magical realm even stronger than this yet-to-be-born wasteland. Soon, perhaps several thousand years, and you with your vampiric need to eat souls, Mindlord, you will be forced to sleep as there is no life here for you to feed on.”
“Do I recognize that voice?” Shella asked. Suddenly the golden man in the sky turned his head, and then softly a voice came to them.
“Ah, it seems even a wizard can screw up. Hi, Slade, Shella, I thought this world empty.”
“Omigger!” Slade yelled gladly.
“Yes, my boy. Now I have to do something I would rather not. I have to ask you a favor. I did not think you would be here, but now that you are, I would like you to kill the Mindlord. My plan would likely work, but it's safer to just kill him now.”
“You had a plan?”
“Indeed, I intended to strand him here, in a universe where most of his powers wouldn’t work and there were no creatures on whom he could prey. However, it did not occur to me that versers might visit here--shortsighted of me, since of course I knew it was here from having visited it myself, but there it is. I can’t trust that someone else wouldn’t verse in, and somehow free this monster from its prison, but I can trust that you can finish it.”
“M’lord,” Shella said, and it took Slade a moment to realize that this was addressed to her uncle, not to him, “Why don’t you finish him yourself?”
“Alas,” the wizard replied, “he placed a block in my mind, preventing me from taking violent action against him. It took some thought to work out how I could neutralize him by bringing him here, but I’m going to have to find a way to remove the block. I gather that it’s something Lauren might be able to do, but I haven’t seen her in a hundred universes or so, so I shouldn’t count on running into her soon.”
“What’s to stop him,” Slade asked, “from doing that to us?”
“I believe it won’t work in this universe.”
That actually made sense--lots of magic, but they hadn’t really even tried psionics, because they didn’t often use them.
“Leave it to us,” Slade said. “Join us for lunch?”
“I think you should get on the task quickly. You don’t want to have to chase it all over the planet.”
Slade nodded, and suddenly the wizard was gone--but the creature was still there. “I will crush you,” it said, the voice echoing across the land, and Slade suddenly wondered whether he had agreed to something beyond his abilities.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
